


The Song in the Soil

by Ria Talla (ronia)



Series: One Quarter of the Stars [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Jedi, Jedi Training, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), The Force, Twi'leks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 17:32:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17750357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ronia/pseuds/Ria%20Talla
Summary: Aayla Secura, Republic Era/pre-Prequel TrilogyHe had asked her to stay below in the ship, so she wouldn't know where they were going, and then to wrap the cloth over her eyes before she could get a glimpse of where they'd landed. He alwaysasked. And Aayla never turned down a challenge.





	The Song in the Soil

Aayla Secura  
~ 44 BBY

First, there was the sun. It was warm along her skin. Warm, but not hot. Speckled by shadow. The air was thick, and that was where the heat came from. It was heavy like she'd slung it on her back. And it smelled - _wonderful_. Fresh water, water she could hear trickling through branches and along creek beds. Tall grass, bright flowers. Animal dung and the sharp tang of blood, from some creature that was becoming another's meal. Aayla listened, her lekku twitched, but she felt the footsteps of nothing larger than a tooka. Aside from her Master.

"Can I take it off now?"

"That's up to you."

That meant _no_ , even if Master Vos wouldn't just say it. He had asked her to stay below in the ship, so she wouldn't know where they were going, and then to wrap the cloth over her eyes before she could get a glimpse of where they'd landed. He always _asked_. And Aayla never turned down a challenge.

But the lack of direction in this one was starting to annoy her.

"I don't even know what I'm looking for."

"Are you in a hurry, _aayl toine_?"

He was over her head – he must have climbed a tree. She could climb one too, she wouldn't need her eyes for that. The view was better down here, though, now that she thought about it. Maybe that was what he wanted her to do. _Don't look with your eyes_ was something the Masters said a lot. Maybe he thought she'd see better without them. It was a place to start.

So Aayla didn't go up. She crouched down, spreading her fingers into the soil, and she felt the pinprick footsteps of insects, quick track of rodents, the smooth glide of a snake maybe five meters away. Slowly, she lowered her knees down into the soil, and laid down entirely, on her side, resting her lekku and one cone ear against the dirt.

"And you're taking a nap now?"

She smiled. "You said not to hurry."

Master Vos didn't answer this time. But she could still feel his presence above her. She had felt him before ever seeing him. It always made her think of a bright, gold light. Like the sunset over the desert where she'd outrun lyleks, wrestled blurrgs, and stolen food from the villages she ran past. Until she'd found him. In the Temple they all said he found her, Master Vos who never trained the younglings had finally found his apprentice, the one the villagers called _aayl_ \- storm. But Aayla knew the truth. Master Vos hadn't come looking for her. She'd come to him.

Blurrg-wrestling would be more exciting right now, she thought. But she didn't feel anything that big nearby. Her lekku twitched with a line of ants stepping together less than a meter away. And then there was the snake, still gliding along. Nothing she felt like bothering – nothing she _should_ bother. She really _shouldn't_ bother anything. She knew that. The other Masters would definitely frown on blurrg-wrestling, even if she tried to explain who started it.

"You're getting distracted, padawan," Master Vos' voice rang out, above the patter and trickle of the forest. He didn't call her _padawan_ very much, so she must've really been distracted. "Clear your mind."

Aayla took a deep breath. She tried to focus on the darkness behind her eyes. But as her thoughts went quiet, the noise around her grew louder. Birds flicked from one branch to another, shuffling leaves, snapping insects between their beaks. Water slid warm along tree trunks, pooling deep in their roots and weaving back up again, like blood weaving through veins. She felt all of that, too – heartbeats, tens, hundreds, thousands. A slim-toed rat scraping through the soil, its long feet sweeping back and forth. Tiny beats trembled in eggs burrowed deep below the surface, life bright and loud and circled in silence, in bones, cracked claws, little bits of skin.

She knew she couldn't see all of it, or hear all of it herself. She relaxed, like Master Vos had taught her, and slipped deeper into the soil. She tried to let it all rush over her, like a wave. _Wait until the wave passes, before you try to swim again_.

She had never tried to swim anywhere when she first heard that. So instead he'd promised her, after all that sound, there would also be silence.

But there wasn't now. Aayla heard something. 

One thing.

She didn't remember getting to her feet. But she was standing, now, in the dark. She wasn't looking with her eyes, so she didn't see the sunlight against her blindfold. There was the empty darkness around her, no trees, no footsteps, not even Master Vos was with her anymore. But there was something so soft, yet so clear she couldn't understand how she hadn't heard it before. A few fragile notes, shivering in the dark, a sound that made her think of strong winds whipping up the sand. Repeating over and over, like a song. Aayla knew she'd heard it before.

Her feet were in the soil. She took one step forward, and then another. If Master Vos saw her, called out to her, she didn't hear him. Her soft song still hummed below, now vibrating along her skin. She imagined it like waves of light, rippling with each step she took. Aayla didn't know where she was going, she just moved, walking onward, weaving along the small slopes, the tall grass, and the creatures scuttling alongside her.

Until she reached an enormous tree, with giant roots that spiraled out around it. She felt it as she approached, with its wide trunk and high crown of branches that reached up above her. Aayla knelt down and pressed her hand along one arm of its roots. The bark was surprisingly smooth, marked by tiny holes that buzzed with insects, chipped by claws and talons, nibbled by rodents. For a moment, she saw all of it.

Then she climbed up onto one of the roots, balancing herself along it. She reached out her arms, and lifted her lekku. Then she jumped to the next root, and the next. Each time, she reached out with one foot first, feeling for the root ahead. She kept jumping until she'd moved halfway around the tree. When she reached out again, this time, she felt nothing. Not even when she leaned farther out, still carefully holding her balance. She couldn't reach what was next. 

She jumped anyway. After all, she could leap so high, and so far, if she wanted.

Aayla kept one foot forward for the expected landing, to be ready to balance on the next curved root. And it came – but maybe she'd leapt too far. Or not far enough. Her toe touched the root, she felt the bark scrape her skin. But it wasn't enough for her to grip, and she fell back.

And fell.

It wasn't possible that she could fall this far, in a gap between two tree roots. But for a few seconds, she didn't feel anything. Not the tree, or the insects, or even herself falling. It was like she was floating, alone, in the dark.

And then she was lying in the soil again. But it wasn't like before. She felt no sun on her skin, no Master Vos above her. There was movement, very small, and much slower down here. She pressed her hands to the ground, she wasn't even sure it would hold her up. But it seemed firm, and she got to her feet again.

There was no light along the fabric that covered her eyes. Aayla nearly took it off – it couldn't matter down here, after all. But she hesitated. Looking with her eyes made her nervous, suddenly. She felt safer leaving the blindfold on. So instead she began to walk again. She turned her head up, but still felt no light, no sign of the hole she must have fallen from. She walked to one side, and reached out her hand, where she found a wall. With that touch, her mind lit up. She felt the curved shape of the tunnel she was in, large enough for her to walk at her full height, though her lekku reached nearly to the top of it. It was webbed with burrows, with underground hives, with bones slowly dissolving into dirt. She felt a direction, forward, though she couldn't see where it led. She could wait, and hope to be found, or she could walk.

 _Do or do not_ she heard, like she was back in the Temple. Aayla started walking.

As she walked, as her feet sank into the soil, her fingers dragged along the tunnel wall, she started to feel that it wasn't so different after all, down here. Or like she had drifted to sleep, but was now waking up again. There was so much down here, water dripping through tiny crevices, the rich smell of dirt and leaves and – something else she didn't recognize. Her fingers along the wall brushed against the very edges of roots, and she saw the tall trees and high grass above. But what Aayla didn't hear any longer was the song, the soft notes that had brought her down here in the first place. She didn't know if she would hear it, with all this noise. Maybe she needed to focus again. She stopped, pressed her hand full against the tunnel wall. 

The tunnel shook.

She stepped back as the tunnel shook again, and again. There was very little sound with it, only a soft _thump_. But Aayla's lekku shivered, and she knew. It was an approach. Whatever it was, its steps rocked the cavern, but were muffled by the damp soil. 

_Run_ was her first thought. Master Vos' voice caught her before she could follow it. _The thought of a prey animal_. She was a Jedi. Maybe this was why she was down here. She couldn't just run from it. 

She dug her feet into the soft soil and crouched to stay balanced as the cave shook around her. And then she remembered – her blindfold. Shouldn't she take it off now? But even if she did, she probably wouldn't be able to see anything. There still wasn't any light, not that she could see with her eyes. Still, something was coming for her – could it see her in the dark?

Aayla knew it was ahead of her. She could hear its footsteps more clearly, and feel small gusts of air as it breathed. It was slowing down as it came closer to her. That made Aayla feel better. Maybe it was nervous about her, too.

She stood to her full height again, and the footsteps stopped. It was close enough that she could feel its breath. She still couldn't tell its shape, or how big it was. Just that it was big, and that it breathed. In the quiet, she could hear a strong heartbeat. Aayla took a step forward, and it didn't move back. She knew it was standing still, and she stepped forward again. For a second, she imagined herself reaching out an arm into some enormous mouth of sharp teeth. But she did it anyway, slowly, reaching into the dark.

Her hand touched something smooth. The creature didn't have fur, but large, damp scales. She could tell it was enormous now, as her hand moved over the curved shape that she guessed was the creature's head. Big enough to dig these tunnels. She moved her hand over the top of its head, and then down, along its snout. There was a low grunt, and the creature stomped its feet in the dirt. Aayla didn't pull back. She moved her hand slowly to one side, on and on. Until she realized it didn't have eyes.

"How do you see?" she asked.

It was a question for herself. But the creature shook off her hand, and shuffled away from her. For a moment, she thought it was leaving, before she heard its deep breath. And then there was a call, very loud and very high-pitched. She knew somehow she wasn't hearing all of it, but it was still so loud that she covered her ears and shut her eyes under the blindfold. The creature repeated it, three times, and she fell to her knees.

Then Aayla knew. She knew the network of tunnels, their shape flashing in her mind. She knew what the creature looked like – it was like an enormous lizard, with a rounded triangular head, webbed front claws, and a long tail. And she heard it again, the soft song. Still somewhere beneath her. She reached into the dirt, as though she could dig to it, she even shoveled up a few handfuls of it, until she felt the lizard brush her arm.

Aayla stood up. She reached out to the lizard again, touching what she thought was its shoulder. And the lizard started moving. The ground still shook, but she kept her balance, following the creature forward, and then down, going deeper and deeper. The tunnels were getting smaller the deeper they went, until Aayla had to let the creature go, so she could move through the narrow space ahead of it. The lizard still followed her. She could feel it like a cold wind behind her. It was breathing fast, and she was, too. She took deeper breaths. Her feet shook a little as the smaller and smaller tunnels shook, too. Her head started to ache.

And then the cave floor went sideways, and she was falling, her feet skidding on the ground. Aayla fell flat onto her stomach and tried to claw at the dirt, slow herself down, but she couldn't get a grip. Her hand ripped right through the soil, and she could feel the creature still at the top, while she fell farther and farther away from it. She was alone again. Farther and farther from the creature, from her Master –

The fall stopped. The ground was flat again. And there was light. 

Not light she imagined. Light she could _see_. Deep blue light. It was all that she could see. If this was another tunnel, a cave, the black of space, Aayla wouldn't know. There was just the blue light. She couldn't even see herself, feel herself. She knew she was moving, moving closer toward it, reaching out toward into the bright center of it –

 

 

" _Aayl_." 

Her eyes snapped open, and then closed again. The blindfold was gone, and the sunlight was bright and painful in her eyes. But she blinked a few times, as she got used to it. There was so much green, the long leaves above her, the tall grass, the moss climbing the trunk she was lying against. Aayla kept her eyes open long enough to see the roots that she was curled into, and up from them, along the tall tree, and high above, to catch sight of a bright blue bird flash in the sunlight as it leapt from one branch to the next. 

"Aayla," Master Vos repeated. She turned to him – he was crouched on the ground, in a shadowy spot near her. With a nod, he asked, "What's in your hands, Aayla?"

She looked down. There was dirt smeared over her hands, arms, and clothes. And her hands were held tightly against each other. Whatever was between them, she couldn't feel it – not like something pressing into her skin. Instead she felt warmth, a comfortable heat that she almost didn't want to release. But she turned one hand over, cupping them both together and lifting her arms toward Master Vos. There was a flash of light, and then something small rose up, just above her cupped hands. A shard of bright blue crystal.

Aayla didn't need to ask what it was. Master Vos reached out, and lowered his hand over it, placing the crystal back into her grasp. "Keep it safe," he said. "You'll be needing it soon."

There were so many things she could say or ask now. But she got so excited when she heard this, there was only one thing she could think to ask. "For a lightsaber?"

Master Vos smiled. "You must be ready." 

She nodded, closing her hands around the crystal again, as he moved away from her. He rose to his feet, and turned from her, looking up to the sky through the trees above. "I'd like to show you something," he said.

Aayla also stood, a little shaky at first. Her hands were still clenched together, and she also looked up, but only saw spots of green-blue sky through the leaves. He began to walk, and she followed, gathering strength again as she stepped through the high grass. Her lekku snapped as she walked, shaking off dirt. The rest would have to wait, but that had never bothered her. She stayed quiet as they walked on, for several minutes, until she saw the sunlight shine over her Master as he stepped into a clearing. She followed him out into it – for a moment, it felt so bright and warm that it was all that she could see.

"Go ahead, look up."

She shook her head, and looked up again, to the pale sky. And she saw it right away, like she'd been looking for it. The soft outline of an orange-brown circle. A small shape in the sky, but close enough she knew it must have been a moon – or that _this_ was the moon.

"Ryloth," she murmured. She heard another soft _thump_ , and Master Vos was sitting cross-legged in the tall grass behind her.

"Most younglings find their kyber crystals in the caves on Ilum," he told her, as she turned back to him. "That's the old Jedi tradition. But a kyber should be a partner for life. It should come from some place close to you."

She looked back down at her still tightly closed hands. "How did you know I'd find it here?"

"I didn't," he answered. "But kyber can thrive in places like this, dense with life. I thought, perhaps, it would find you."

Her grip softened. The crystal was still safely in her grasp, but she didn't cling to it, like it might fly away from her. She looked back up, at the sky, to her old home. Ryloth, the Temple. Now, what she held between her hands was what felt like home.

After a few minutes, she heard Master Vos get up again. He patted her shoulder, and then walked on through the grass.

"May the Force be with you, _Aayl_."

**Author's Note:**

> _Aayla –_   
>  _You were given an unconventional look for a Jedi, for reasons I'm sure were entirely to do with your character and personality. I figured you could have some unconventional training, too._
> 
>  
> 
> The invented Twi'leki used in this is drawn from my own making-things-up, which was at one point based on a few snippets mentioned in _Clone Wars_ , and now is me doing what I want. Probably most relevant here is that I've imagined 'Aayla' as a Basic-izing of her name.


End file.
